The 2010 Gordon Research Conference on Lasers in Medicine and Biology will be held from July 25-30, 2010 at the Holderness School, Holderness, New Hampshire. The intent of the conference is to assemble lead investigators from academia, clinics /hospitals, national laboratories, and industry to examine the future directions of biophotonics research with the goal of improving medical practices and biological understanding. A second goal of this conference is to provide an intellectually challenging, open, and convivial environment to assimilate young researchers into this exciting field. Nine technical sessions are scheduled to provide a broad and comprehensive coverage of the biophotonics field while giving in depth examination of several rapidly developing subfields. The titles of the sessions are (1) Problem driven session: endoscopy, (2) Microscopy, (3) Therapy, (4) Photoacoustic tomography, (5) Diffuse optical tomography, (6) Optical coherence tomography, (7) Contrast agents, (8) Frontier technologies, and (9) Problem driven session: neuroscience. We believe that the biophotonics community is an important growing component in our biomedical research portfolio and this Gordon Research Conference is vital to the health of our community. We seek funds from the National Institute of Health to support this important meeting. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The advances in biophotonics have enabled new clinical procedures and have brought new biological understandings. The "Gordon Conference on Lasers in Medicine and Biology" gathers leading investigators in the photonics field to jointly identify and tackle the most relevant biomedical problems. The conference further serves as an educational forum where graduate students and postdoctoral fellows can interact with and learn from senior investigators both formally in scientific sessions and informally in social activities.